STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 45 



in your particular district?". "Yes." "Have you answered?" 

 "No." "You couldn't expect them to send you one. That is 

 the way they have of getting your name, finding out whether 

 or not you are interested enough to send a report. Jf you 

 were not interested enough to send that report, they have not 

 sent you one." The Government even sends it free. All you 

 have to do is to put on a few figures and they will send you 

 that report for several months, the doings of the whole apple 

 crop of the United States, free of charge. Only thirty-three 

 per cent of those reports come back. 



Mr. Sanders : And mind you that is from a carefully 

 selected list of apple growers. It is not the general farmer. 

 That illustrates the situation so well that I wanted to call on 

 the gentleman to give it. 



Mr. Robinson : I know hundreds of your reports come into 

 our neighborhood and I only know two men (myself and one 

 other) who send them back. If they could get sixty-six per 

 cent of the reports instead of thirty-three per cent it would be 

 a good deal more accurate. But then, lots of us do not know 

 anything about estimating. In our neighborhood we figured 

 we had about 700 barrels ; we had 2,700 barrels. I ordered 400. 

 All I could get was 350, and I had to drive sixteen miles to get 

 those fifty barrels. The interest on the price of a hundred 

 barrels does not amount to much. You better have them in 

 your barn. Lots of my neighbors can not get a barrel to put 

 their apples in. That is the way we estimate crops. I reported 

 I had twice the crop I had last year. I had nearly four times 

 the crop. 



Mr. Sanders: I think it is only fair to Mr. Robinson to 

 state, as I believe, he is somewhat of an amateur in growing 

 apples and has not had the years of experience that will soon 

 enable him to come far closer to his crop. 



Mr. Robinson: If anybody asked me how much it would 

 cost to build a railroad from here to Cumberland Mills I could 

 tell them pretty nearly. 



Mr. Sanders : We find that the men who have been grow- 

 ing apples for a period of years and have had to measure the 

 crop closely to avoid heavy over-purchase or under-purchase 

 and consequent loss, have acquired this skill of closely figuring 

 their crop. 



